The phone rang for what must have
been the 10th or 12th time, interrupting
Scott Carson's train of thought. The Connexion by Boeing president knew the voice
on the other end would belong to his sales director, Stan Deal, as it had with
the previous calls.

"What's your recommendation?" Carson asked. Deal was quiet
for a moment. Hard as it was to walk away from a proposed venture involving the
nation's three largest airlines,
Deal couldn't avoid it. "We have to let
them go."

There had been tentative agreement, announced with great fanfare just
weeks before Sept. 11, 2001, to pursue a venture with the airlines and bring
broadband Internet and data services to flight. The airlines would have equipped
1,500 planes—11 percent
of the world's fleet—with the Connexion by Boeing service. Now, in the weeks
after Sept. 11, the airline industry shifted
commercial aviation's focus sharply from capital investment to sheer survival.

Carson had reached the same conclusion, even though he knew it could
mean the end of the program. The market environment had changed, so adapting
quickly was
essential in order to minimize risk and take advantage of new opportunities.
The team would have
to get smaller, so it reduced its work force
by about one-third—though Boeing redeployed many elsewhere and actually laid
off
only a handful.

"We were blessed with a skilled, motivated and solutions-oriented
team. We'd talk about what we had to do, discuss briefly all the reasons why
it couldn't be done, and then
we'd go out and do it," Carson said. "We met each of our commitments and met
them on time, and each accomplishment lifted the morale and confidence of the
entire team."

The team also had to revise the planned service rollout to reflect
the new reality.
Connexion by Boeing's business plan had been built on the presumption that airlines
would initially deploy the service in the United States. After Sept. 11, a path
forward would require the first deployments to be international. This approach
represented a greater challenge.

Yet the enterprise already had a head start
internationally. Its lone remaining customer was Lufthansa German Airlines.
Adapting a strategy from the successful Boeing 777 program, Connexion
invited 15 airlines
worldwide to the first Connexion Working Together session in January 2002.

Despite
the financial turbulence and cost cutting throughout the airline industry,
the participants showed up.

"That was a key indicator that we were on
the right track," said Sean Schwinn, director of Strategy and Business Development.

Within 10 months, three more customers were on board: British Airways,
Japan Airlines and Scandinavian Airline Systems. All had been part of
Connexion Working
Together.